I am committing to the page some healthful admonitions, like the recipe for useful salves. I have found these effective on my own sores, which, even if not completely healed, have ceased to spread.
Seneca, Letters on Ethics, 8.2
Come in, come in! What ails you?
Play the music below and find your prescription from the ancient Stoic healers.
Anger
Plotting how to bite back someone who bites and to return evil against the one who first did evil is characteristic of a beast, not a man. A beast is not able to comprehend that many of the wrongs done to people are done out of ignorance and a lack of understanding. A person who gains this comprehension immediately stops doing wrong. It is characteristic of a civilized and humane temperament not to respond to wrongs as a beast would and not to be implacable towards those who offend, but to provide them with a model of decent behavior.
Musonius Rufus, Lectures, 10.5
Anxiety
My advice to you is this: don't be miserable before it is time. Those things you fear as if they were impending may never happen; certainly they have not happened yet. Some things torment us more than they should, some sooner than they should; and some torment us that should not do so at all: either we add to our pain, or we make it up, or we get ahead of it.
Seneca, Letters on Ethics, 13.4-5
Craving
You should guard what is your own by every means, but shouldn't desire what is another's. Your good faith is your own, your self-respect is your own; for who can take those away from you? Who apart from yourself can prevent you from making use of them? But for your own part, how do you behave? Whenever you devote your attention to what is not your own, you lose what is truly your own.
Epictetus, Discourses, 1.25, 4
Dissatisfaction
Don't seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you'll have a calm and happy life.
Epictetus, Handbook 8
Envy
So whenever you see someone being preferred above you in the awarding of honors, or holding great power, or enjoying high repute in any other way, take care that you don't get carried away by the outward impression and count him as happy; for if the nature of the good is one of the things that lie within our power, there can be no place for either envy or jealousy, and you yourself won't want to be a praetor or senator or consul, but a free man. Now there is one path alone that leads to that: to despise everything that doesn't lie within our own power.
Epictetus, Handbook 19
Fear of Death
Consider what it means to die, and that if one considers death in isolation, stripping away by rational analysis all the false impressions that cluster around it, one will no longer consider it to be anything other than a process of nature, and if somebody is frightened of a process of nature, he is no more than a child; and death, indeed, is not only a process of nature but also beneficial to her.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.12
Grief
So rejoice that you had such a good brother, and be content with your enjoyment of him, although it was briefer than you wanted. Count the fact that you had him as a great delight, the fact that you lost him as human.
Seneca, Consolation to Polybius, 10.6
Inability to concentrate
You must exclude from the sequence of your thoughts all that is aimless and random, and, above all, idle curiosity and malice; and you must train yourself only to think such thoughts that if somebody were suddenly to ask you, "What are you thinking of?" you could reply in all honesty and without hesitation, of this thing or that, and so make it clear at once from your reply that all within you is simple and benevolent, and worthy of a social being who has no thought for pleasure, or luxury in general, or contentiousness of any kind, or envy, or anything else that you would blush to admit if you had it in your mind.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.4
Inconsistency
Of the things that you initially proposed for yourself, consider which you have achieved and which you haven't, and how it gives you joy to recall some of them and pain to recall others, and if possible, try to recover even those that have slipped from your grasp. For those who are engaged in the greatest of contests shouldn't flinch, but must be prepared to take blows.
Epictetus, Discourses, 3.25, 1-2
Longing for quiet
If things turn out in such a way that you find yourself living alone, or with few companions, call that peace and quiet, and make us of those circumstances as you ought; converse with yourself, work on your impressions, perfect your preconceptions. But if you get caught in a crowd, call it the games, call it a public gathering, call it a festival, and join in the festival with everyone else…
“But they deafen me with their shouting!” Then is it your hearing that is impeded. What does that matter to you? Is your ability to deal with impressions hampered in the same way? And who can prevent you from exercising your desires and aversions in accordance with nature, and so too your motives to act or not to act? What commotion has power enough to do that?
Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4, 24-28
Melancholy
You should not be disgusted, or lose heart, or give up if you are not wholly successful in accomplishing every action according to correct principles, but when you are thwarted, return to the struggle, and be well contented if for the most part your actions are worthier of human nature.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.9
Lack of motivation
When you act, let it be neither unwillingly, nor selfishly, nor unthinkingly nor half-heartedly; do not attempt to embellish your thoughts by dressing them up in fine language; avoid excessive talk and superfluous action...And show a cheerful face to the world, and have no need of help from outside or the peace that others confer. In brief, you must stand upright, not be held upright.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.5
Lack of self-confidence
Consider every word and deed that accords with nature to be worthy of you, and do not allow yourself to be turned aside by the criticisms and talk that may follow, but if anything is rightly said or done, do not consider that you deserve anything less. For those others have their own guiding centre and follow their own impulses; so do not trouble yourself about that, but proceed directly on your course, guided by your own nature and by universal nature; for both of these follow one single path.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.3
Overconfidence
Living as we do among such people, who are so confused, and don't know what they're saying, or what evil they have within them, or where they got it from, or how they can get rid of it, we should constantly be focusing our attention, I think, on the following thoughts: “Could it be, perhaps, that I too am one of these people? What kind of person do I picture myself as being? How do I conduct myself? Is it really as a wise person, as someone who has control of himself? Can I say for my part that I've been educated to face everything that may come? Is it indeed the case, as is fitting for someone who knows nothing, that I'm aware that I know nothing?”
Epictetus, Discourses, 2.21, 8-10
Procrastination
When you relax your attention for a short while, don't imagine that you'll be able to recover it whenever you please, but bear this in mind, that because of the error you've committed today, your affairs will necessarily proceed for worse in every respect. For to begin with, and most seriously of all, a habit of inattention will grow up in you, and then a habit of deferring any effort to pay attention. So you should be aware that you'll be constantly putting off to an even later time a happy and appropriate way of life, a life that is in accord with nature and will remain so. Now, if it brings any advantage to put things off, it will bring an even greater advantage to give them up entirely; but if it brings no advantage, why don't you maintain your attention consistently?
Epictetus, Discourses, 4.12, 1-3
Resentment
Despising injuries requires not a wise man, but one in his right mind, who can say to himself: “Are things happening to me deservingly or undeservingly? If deservingly, it is not insult, but judgment. If undeservingly, we should be embarrassed for him who does what is unjust.”
Seneca, On Constancy, 16.3